Alaska Airlines has a fantastic award chart compared to many other airlines for premium class travel to Asia. And they have great partners, though they don’t always seem to have as much access to Cathay Pacific award space as other airlines do.

Now Cathay Pacific — and JAL — booking is about to get worse because Alaska will no longer allow reservations within 3 days of travel.

Could be old news, but looks like @AlaskaAir is not allowing any mileage redemptions on Cathay, JAL, or Hainan within 72 hours of departure due to “high fraud” as of February 8th.

Though when Hilton announced free points pooling their Senior Vice President Mark Weinstein made the point to me that controlling fraud shouldn’t create challenges for legitimate members. That’s a cop out.

Update: Hainan Airlines is included in the 72 hour ban.

There currently is not a list, we are working on updating the information online. The airlines are CX, JAL, and HU. To my understanding no changes are allowed 72 hours prior to departure. -Tara

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Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

For a very long time British Airways and Qantas haven’t displayed or allowed online booking of Cathay awards in the 5 – 7 days before departure. There are tricks to get around it on Qantas but, I trust Alaska are having to do this at Cathay’s request.

@James highlights the biggest flaw in this new restriction. CX very frequently does not make unfilled F seats available until that 72 hrs before departure window. Alaska is now denying their MP people the opportunity to enjoy a CX F flight. If you have a ‘placeholder’ Business award in anticipation of a late F seat opening up, you’d be pretty pissed if it does and you are denied it! I have no idea of the ins-and-outs of the alleged ‘fraud’, but do not see why the sins of the few should be paid for by the honest majority. Is no solution available, or is Alaska’s aging IT platform unable to cope? A retrograde development all round IMO !

@ CoolHandLuke – Not much different from the frustration of having an SFO seat open up and being unable to change from an LAX ticket because the AS agents can’t see the available seat. Chalk it up to an IT glitch if you like, but the new 3 day rule just institutionalizes the fact that Alaska routinely keeps its customers from booking high value awards.

Once I switched a seat from Y+ to F on the day before departure, where all we could get was one F seat in advance; and once, two in F came open, and we switched from two in J, on the morning of departure. They really need to allow changes to existing bookings. I also think that they should differentiate between BIS Alaska flyers and people who just buy their miles.

@CoolHandLuke —> “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.” (Or, as many a lawyer has said, “You’re assuming facts not in evidence.”)

1) @Bails369 wrote above: “I trust Alaska are having to do this at Cathay’s request.”
2). @CoolHandLuke wrote above: “Alaska is now denying their MP people the opportunity to enjoy a CX F flight.”

It CANNOT be both. So what FACTS do you OR Bails369 have to support your position? Is this CX’x doing? Or something being done by AS? Which is it? How do you/we know?

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

Speaking strictly from a personal (selfish) level, I can’t remember booking a flight within 72 hours of departure, unless it was an emergency of some sort (like someone was in an accident, fell seriously ill, or there was a death in the family). Thus, this is largely irrelevant to me: any “big” trips (i.e.: overseas) are planned out in advance.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.

Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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